In the past, one-on-one interactions with customers drove in-store conversational marketing. But today, with everything going virtual, most shopping takes place online through ecommerce stores. Now, if you want your business to succeed in 2022, you need to find a way to effectively engage buyers on your store’s website or app.
This is where chatbots can help.
AI-enabled chatbots are a great way to make that engagement. Through algorithmic learning and automated responses, a qualified chatbot for marketing can establish a strong line of communication between your customers and your business, almost like having an in-person sales associate there to help. This goes a long way to boost your conversational marketing strategy and increase sales.
Curious to learn how chatbots can enhance your ecommerce store? Keep reading to find out how you can use AI chatbots for your conversational marketing campaign.
How Does Chatbot Marketing Work?
This innovative new marketing method works by employing an AI-powered computer program to automate interactions with prospective customers, ensuring all customers receive instant responses. The chatbot can be used to initiate conversations with new visitors to your website, answer support questions, or offer general assistance. By providing customers with immediate access to a smart AI marketing bot, it makes it easier for them to navigate your site and complete purchases, which in turn drives revenue.
Along with providing general help, chatbots can also be used to promote products or services through targeted messaging. This chatbot function allows you to guide customers to special sales or promotions, upsell, and leave customers feeling uniquely helped.
Benefits of Chatbot Marketing
Leveraging AI marketing bots for your website gives you a much better chance of engaging prospects and converting them to marketing qualified leads (MQLs) or sales qualified leads (SQLs) at scale. From a financial perspective, this means you can achieve your bottom line without increasing headcount. But along with increased conversions, marketing chatbots also provide a range of other benefits for businesses too. Some of these include:
- Lead Generation—Chatbots can increase lead generation by filtering prospects and answering sales queries when the sales team is unavailable.
- Customer Engagement—AI chatbots work nonstop, allowing you to engage with the largest audience possible.
- Time and Cost—Unlike employees, chatbots are one-time investments that work 24/7, giving you immense freedom to scale your marketing strategy with minimal resources. Furthermore, they provide customers with instant responses, saving time for them too.
- Data Collection—Since marketing chatbots are powered by AI, they can easily collect data from customers, analyze it accurately, and then provide you with key insights about your target audience, like their specific needs and preferences.
5 Ways to Use Chatbots for Conversational Marketing
Now that you understand why AI chatbots are good for ecommerce businesses, here are 5 ways you can use chatbots to expand your own marketing strategy and reach.
- Automate the Marketing Process
Marketing campaigns take a lot of work. For many small and medium-sized businesses, it can be difficult (or sometimes impossible) to gather the resources to fund a successful marketing launch.
But automated chatbots eliminate the need for extra funding or resources. They are a one-time fee, capable of working nonstop hours. Automating your marketing process with AI chatbots is a good move, especially if you are in the early stages of your business.
- Automatically Qualify Your Leads
Nowadays, it is uncommon for a business to rely on a sales rep alone to qualify leads. Most automate the process for qualifying leads with AI chatbots.
By programming your chatbots to ask visitors prequalifying questions, not only do you provide customers with a more interactive, engaging method for filling out contact information, but you also gain real-time insight into authentic leads.
- Schedule Customer Meetings
A huge part of the marketing process involves booking meetings with customers to capture leads. But juggling meetings manually and making sure none of them conflict is a full-time job in and of itself. A job many business owners simply don’t have the time or resources to fill. Until chatbots, that is.
AI chatbots are the perfect tool to help schedule meetings and keep your calendar on track. Marketing bots allow you to modify and cancel meetings, view other people’s schedules, and designate meeting preferences, all without any extra human assistance. Some AI marketing bots even enable participants to vote on the preferred time for a meeting.
- Personalize User Experience
According to reports, about 71% of online customers respond better to personalized ads. Adopting personalization means ensuring your business will provide each user with a customized experience. AI bot marketing simplifies all of this. Not only are AI chatbots capable of personalizing experiences, but they can also promote relevant offers and discounts to the right customers.
Essentially, AI chatbots create a personalized user experience by collecting data from users, quickly analyzing it, and then leveraging the information to produce a customized experience for the shopper. Program chatbots to initiate conversation with web visitors right away in order to customize their experience with your brand from start to finish. Using automated chatbots makes the customization experience seamless and automatic. Oftentimes, the customer won’t even realize the experience is personalized. But this means it’s working.
- Order Tracking and Shipment Details
Nobody enjoys waiting for a package to be delivered. But automating the order tracking process with chatbots makes the wait much more tolerable. By providing customers with a detailed look at their order and shipment details, along with when to expect delivery, you increase their trust and satisfaction in your business.
Staying up-to-date in the software industry is a full-time job. And developing a successful marketing strategy for your ecommerce business can be a challenge. That’s why many companies turn to business partners like KitelyTech, Inc. for assistance. At KitelyTech, Inc., we work with companies to develop and implement new software solutions, marketing strategies, and more. Call us at (800) 274-2908 to discuss your business’s software needs and find out how we can help.
